On the writing front (book content is French-only) #
Le Cabinet des Mauvais Souvenirs :
« Elle pousse la porte et découvre ce qui ressemble bel et bien à un cabinet. La salle d’attente est reconnaissable aux éléments clés qu’on trouve habituellement dans les salles d’attente : chaises, table basse, magasines, même une pile de mangas. Le comptoir d’accueil, le bureau derrière… tout est là. L’impression de faire erreur ne vient que du patchwork à partir duquel on a aménagé l’endroit. Merle possède bien une théière en fonte qu’elle n’utilise jamais et dont elle a finalement fait un serre-livre, le principe de détourner un objet de sa fonction pour se débrouiller avec les moyens du bord ne lui est donc pas inconnu. C’est simplement qu’ici, ce principe s’applique à peu près à tout. »
On the web front #
Since I like the Ember framework, I’d like to briefly discuss Mainmatter’s Ember Initiative. Not all frontend frameworks receive the same level of investment. Some are backed by tech giants (like Angular by Google or React by Meta), while others rely on their community. Ember is one of them, and one of the reasons I’m so attached to it.
Maintaining such a large open-source project requires corporate investment. Through the Ember Initiative, Mainmatter offers a solution for companies that want to invest in Ember without committing their own developers’ time or ensuring that funds are used to address their specific concerns. The Initiative funds development time for our team of Ember experts (of which I’m privileged to be a part), and we use it in several ways: by conducting pair programming sessions with our members to help modernize their Ember applications, by contributing to the ecosystem on topics most relevant to our members, and by addressing issues that are generally most critical to the community. The last two points often overlap, as Ember applications share foundational elements that lead to common challenges for everyone.
In a way, being a member of the Ember Initiative means contributing to the future of the framework, because pair programming sessions provide real-world insights into current limitations and what needs improvement to keep the framework up-to-date and fulfilling its mission. I discuss some concrete examples in my article, Ember Initiative: How pairing sessions are growing the Ember community.
In the garden #
It’s the end of January. For those who can, it’s already time to start sowing seeds indoors. Have I begun? No. I’m starting the year in less-than-ideal health, which hasn’t given me the energy to dive back into gardening. That said, here’s how I usually go about it:
I have two mini greenhouses that easily fit on a small folding table. The layout of my house allows me to place this table in front of a southeast-facing window, beneath which a radiator is mounted and still running at this time of year. My mini greenhouses can thus host vegetable seedlings that will benefit from natural light and my heating to germinate peacefully. Once the sprouts are large enough, I transfer them to individual pots and place them under a slightly larger indoor mini greenhouse (this one stands on the floor), and later under an outdoor mini greenhouse or tunnel.
Yes, I only have “mini” greenhouses because I don’t have space for a full-sized one; and yes, I have many mini greenhouses because, during certain months, I end up with lots of baby plants at the same time.